Israel and the Palestinians

A new, flickering hope

Could George Bush's personal involvement light the darkness?

DOES Ariel Sharon mean what he sometimes says? This riddle, intriguing for years on a hypothetical level, has taken on urgent significance with Israel's acceptance of the American-sponsored “road map” designed to produce a two-state peace between Israel and Palestine. Mr Sharon rammed the map through his right-wing cabinet on May 25th, leaving some of his supporters aghast by his deliberate use of the buzzword “occupation”.

AFPSharon too is a peacenik, say critics

“He might as well cross the road from his house and join the [peacenik] Women in Black demonstrating against him,” one settler leader wailed. The progenitor of the settlements, said another, was about to destroy his own creation. The road map requires Israel immediately to dismantle new settlement outposts erected since March 2001, and to freeze further building in all the settlements.

It also requires the Palestinians to reform their government, which they have begun to do, and to crack down on terrorism, which they have not as yet. The settlers, and their rightist and religious hinterland, had been confident that Palestinian non-performance would see off the road map, and render Mr Sharon's sometimes disturbingly peacelike words reassuringly ephemeral. Now they are not so sure.

For the first time George Bush is investing presidential prestige in a direct and personal way in the politically dangerous pursuit of peace in Palestine. A three-way summit is planned in Jordan next week between Mr Bush, Mr Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian prime minister who is still more commonly known as Abu Mazen. Demonstrating the president's determination, his senior aides gave fairly short shrift last week to a list of 14 “reservations” to the road map that Mr Sharon's team submitted.

These comprise an Israeli gloss on the document. After haggling, all the Americans agreed to say was that they would “fully and seriously address” Israel's “real concerns” once implementation of the road map was under way. But they demanded that Mr Sharon now accept it, and get his cabinet formally to endorse it.

With the reservations intact, Mr Sharon was able to woo several waverers among his own Likud ministers. Close relations with America, he argued in cabinet, were Israel's highest strategic priority. The economy, too, would never get right without a political solution. It was wrong, he went on, for Israel to maintain its forcible occupation over 3.5m Palestinians. “That's what it is,” he told a querulous Likud faction meeting in the Knesset next day. “It's occupation. You may not like to hear that word, but that's what it is.”

In the event, the cabinet vote was a comfortable 12 in favour, with seven against and with four Likudists abstaining. The two far-right coalition partners, the National Union and the National Religious Party, said they were staying in the government even though they opposed the road map vehemently, because to leave would open the way for the Labour Party to join.

The arguments that he made and the language that he used are the stock-in-trade of the peace camp, and Mr Sharon plainly was using them advisedly. Later he backed off a bit, explaining that the Palestinian people were occupied, whereas the land itself was “disputed”. But the settlers were unimpressed with this casuistry. Mr Sharon has long spoken of his readiness to make “painful concessions”. They fear the pain will be theirs.

Mr Abbas is less certain. “I'll believe [Mr Sharon] only when he implements the road map,” he told Haaretz, an Israeli paper, on May 28th. “The implementation is the only test.” He said the Israeli reservations were irrelevant so far as he was concerned, and indicated that the Americans had advised him to ignore them.

Pushed by all sides to end Palestinian violence, Mr Abbas is seeking to secure a ceasefire that is accepted, even if not explicitly, by the Islamist military factions. After meetings in Gaza, the Islamists' message to Mr Abbas seems to be yes to a mutual ceasefire, no to a unilateral one. “If Abu Mazen comes back from Sharon with an end to the assassinations and the raids [into Palestinian areas], we will not embarrass him,” said Ismail Abu Shanab, a Hamas leader in Gaza. If not, the “resistance” will continue, witness the blitz of suicide bombings that rocked Israel in May.

In the past Israel has ruled out a truce, claiming that it would be a ruse to allow Hamas and the other militias to replenish their firepower. But recently Mr Sharon has floated the kite of a “temporary” ceasefire, followed by vigorous Palestinian action against the militias. Mr Abbas badly needs this reprieve, partly to rebuild his all but destroyed police forces.

More important, an end to the Israeli incursions, assassinations and house demolitions would give tangible proof to Palestinians that the road map is something more than words on paper. For the first time since the intifada erupted in September 2000, there are solid Palestinian majorities wanting to exchange the blood of revolt for the quiet of negotiations. But their support is conditional on Israel withdrawing from Palestinian cities, freezing settlement construction and returning a degree of normalcy to Palestinian life. Without these the intifada will continue, and be directed not only against Israel.